Light sources having a high luminance are employed in a wide variety of fields, for instance in endoscopy and likewise in projection apparatuses, wherein gas discharge lamps are currently the most widely used. In lighting applications, for example projection or endoscopy, on the basis of LARP (“Laser Activated Remote Phosphor”) technology, which is known in principle, a phosphor is irradiated by a laser. The laser radiation that impinges on the phosphor, also designated hereinafter as pump radiation, is partly converted into wavelength-converted useful light by means of wavelength conversion by the phosphor and is partly backscattered without wavelength conversion by the phosphor.
Although laser radiation is currently usually used in LARP technology, in the context of the present invention, the term LARP is intended to be generalized to the effect that other pump radiation sources suitable for phosphor excitation with radiation properties comparable to a laser, in particular the small beam divergence thereof, are also encompassed, for example super luminescence diodes, if appropriate with or without a downstream optical system.